


In the Ruins

by SylvanWitch



Series: In the Ruins [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: AU after OotP, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 14:26:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is left when the world as you know it is in ruins? Snape and Black search through the ruins of Hogwarts, flee death eaters, and find themselves at the last extremities of endurance. Is there hope at the end of the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> This series constitutes my very first fanfiction endeavor and was originally posted at RestrictedSection.org in 2004. I'm posting it here because it was important to me, and I like looking back at where I've been. Call me nostalgic.

In the ruins, twin ragged shadows moved, thin with the gauntness of long privation, under the miasma of burnt timbers, smoldering hangings, and the sickly-sweet smell of charred flesh, an infernal barbecue. Furtively, they flitted across the pitted moonscape, two rats walking upright, noses turned down to the floor as though seeking the scent of the next meal. One of them stumbled heavily, fell to all fours, and shoved aside the carcass of a canvas portrait, the pink paint melted onto the backing, which curled like a blackened shaving, up and in toward the warped and ruined frame. Snape recognized the Fat Lady who once guarded the door to Gryffindor tower. 

 

"Hssst," he called, sibilant, and the second shadow started as though frightened of itself, then moved as swiftly as the treacherous ground would allow, crouching next to the first man. 

 

"What have you got?" Sirius Black asked. In the wan light of the half moon, his features could just be made out, blackened with soot, dirt, and something darker, congealed. 

 

Snape pointed wordlessly to the sliver of pink frill still visible at the bottom of the frame. Black shuddered, an almost soundless, "No...," falling from his lips like prayer. 

 

The Potions Master stirred impatiently. "There's no sense denying the evidence of your eyes, Black. Besides, surely you, of all people, can smell it?" Snape, whose own nose was as developed as any French perfume afficianado, had already picked up the distinctive ozone smell that effectual and repeated use of the Killing Curse left in the air. 

 

No response, again, but a distinct shuddering. 

 

"Well, let's get on with this unpleasantness, then, shall we? I don't fancy being here when the sun rises." 

 

Black finally spoke, "Right. The Death Eaters will probably return to be sure of their kills." There was something plaintive and hopeful even in this bleak assessment. 

 

"Don't be a fool, Black!," hissed Snape, venomously. "No one's alive in this rubble. They killed everyone first, then brought the tower down to confuse and terrorize us further. I only meant that the sun would add to the stench."

 

For a moment, Black's expression shifted nearer to rage than the resignation that had followed him like an aura to this dark and stinking pit. Then, his shoulders relaxed into the now-characteristic slump of defeat, and he nodded half-heartedly, as though having forgotten what he was agreeing to. 

 

Snape moved forward, into what might have been the Common Room, assuming the tower hadn't twisted as it imploded, and immediately stumbled, again falling to his hands and knees, cursing. "Surely, this is a position more suited to you than to me," he sniped with a dry wheeze that may have been a chuckle or might have been a cough caused by the plume of soot that rose from the place where he had fallen. "Oh, look. I think I've found a Weasley." Dry as bones his voice, as he held up in one hand a shock of red hair, detached from its owner. By the length and the curl, stubborn even in its destruction, they knew it was Ginny's. 

 

Black gagged and muttered, "You're a bastard to the core, Snape." 

 

Snape ignored him and rose unsteadily to a half-crouch. Although they were below ground level, the heavy stone floors having fallen one upon the other, like horizontal dominoes, into the subcellars of the ancient castle, Snape was still nervous about being spotted by enemy sentries, who patrolled the perimeter of what had been, until that morning, the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A shriek, ear-piercing and inhuman, erupted from some distance to their rear, and both shadows jumped, then folded into themselves, as though physically wounded. The sound was sustained, bowel-loosening, as though the last, best hope of the world was wailing its desolation and despair as it died. 

 

"That'll be Buckbeak, then," said Sirius, hoarsely. 

 

"No," Snape responded. "They're hunting the unicorns." 

 

Black had nothing to say to this, and they continued to move through the ruins, stopping and starting in a jerky, odd, crouching dance, as though trying to find the perfect seashell, or picking up scattered marbles, or collecting lost souls. 

 

Snape hissed again, more to get Black's attention than out of sympathy for what he expected to find as he pulled back the splintered remains of a table to reveal the almost perfectly preserved form of a bushy-haired girl, still clutching a quill in her right hand, her face fallen at an angle against an open book, whose pages were a red ruin, like she had been writing with correction ink. Snape laid one, long-fingered hand to her hair, as if to lift her face from the book, and Black choked out, "NO! Gods, just leave her. You see that she's dead!" 

 

Black choked again, a strangled cry that spoke of rising gorge, when he saw a pale, freckled hand reaching out to the girl from beneath a pile of rocks, where bits of red leather and one pounded rivet suggested that there might have once been a couch. Moving to the pile, he began to dig, pulling frantically at the rocks. Snape restrained him forcefully, holding his thin arms hard above the elbows, until his back bowed. 

 

"Quiet, damn you! You'll have the enemy upon us with your noise. If you can't do this like a man, then take your pathetic, doglike whinging elsewhere. We have a job to do!" 

 

"You have no heart, do you, you soulless bastard!" Black said, a deadly calm suffusing his voice, lowering it another octave, making his captor bend to hear. The ex-convict took advantage of Snape's movement and threw his head back into that prominent, hated nose. "Get your fucking hands off of me, you prick!" 

 

Snape, eyes watering, nose a running river of blood, clutched the offended appendage and tripped backwards, falling in a sprawl beside Granger's corpse. The look in his black eyes was murderous, his one free hand clawed awkwardly in his sleeve for his wand. Luckily for Black, Snape was having difficulty concentrating while trying to staunch the flow of blood, and the animagus launched himself, changed form in mid-air, and landed on the Potion Master's midriff, causing an audible "Oof!" as the air was driven out of the now-prone man. 

 

Black changed back in a blink, levering his forearm across Snape's windpipe and applying pressure, as though testing the trachea's ability to support his full weight. The animagus emphasized his next words with a downward motion, for persuasion's sake, "No. Magic. Or. They'll. Know. We're. Here." The wards erected by the Death Eaters had been designed to detect someone trying to get out of the rubble using magic, not anyone trying to break in, but they still effectively prevented the searchers from using any magic, even simple concealment charms, to mask their activity, or a levitation spell to make the work easier. Apparently, the magic used for making the change from human form to animal did not trigger the alarms, for if they had, Snape's worst problem would not be the blood pouring down the back of his throat. 

 

Snape was suffocating and choking on blood, but he nevertheless smiled a bloody-toothed, terrible grin, and wheezed out, "I always knew you wanted to be on top" before bringing up his knees and bucking his hips to unseat the lighter man astride him. 

 

It worked in part. Black fell sideways, off-balance, losing his leverage on Snape's throat, but as he fell, he grabbed a hank of filthy, lank black hair, tugging Snape's head viciously, so that they ended up nose to nose on their sides, a confusion of lower limbs making it impossible for them to right themselves. Snape took advantage of Black's momentary stunning, his ribs having borne the brunt of his fall, to grab Black's hand and wrench his hair free. Then, putting one hand on either side of Black's face, he pulled the smaller man towards him, until their lips were so close that the blood bubbling from Snape at each breath whispered and tickled over Black's bruised lower lip. Black's eyes were huge in the dim light, and he ceased trying to sit up, staring instead at Snape as though mesmerized. Snape took advantage of Black's stillness to say, "Fuck me later, Black. We have no time now." 

 

Black's breath hitched, then, as Snape leaned that fraction of a millimeter closer and brushed his lips across Sirius', lightly ghosting his tongue along his lower lip. As suddenly as the kiss had come, Snape's hands disappeared from Black's face and the tall man was rising, as though pulled by powerful strings, moon-ward. Black rolled his head to look up at the man who now towered over him in silhouette. He breathed, "Yes," so quietly he was not sure he'd said it, but Snape's deep shudder of a laugh, like the moan of wind through a castle wall, told Black that he had. 

 

Without offering the other man a hand, Snape turned and began to remove rocks from the pile under which Ron Weasley was buried. Black rolled to his stomach and crawled over to the freckled hand, laying two fingers against the pulse point and holding his breath. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds. Black's head drooped, hand dropped, and the breath left him in a rush of despair. 

 

Snape hadn't needed to check. Still, there was a better than good chance that Potter had been with his two best friends, so he continued to move the awkward, cold stones, one by one, almost silently, stacking them neatly behind him. Bend, lift, pick up, pivot, set down, pivot, bend. Black picked up the rhythm and soon the pile had diminished until they could make out the torso and twisted neck of the youngest Weasley son. Without conferring, Snape moved to the pile at the right of the body, while Black moved to clear the area to the left, shortly exposing the bloodied face and wide-open, staring eyes. He reached down a shaking hand and closed them. A barely audible snort reached him from his right, and he glanced up to catch Snape sneering. Black's gaze darkened menacingly, but Snape said only, "Bloody sentimentalist," and continued working. 

 

Bend, lift, pick up, pivot, set down, pivot, bend. 

 

Twelve minutes later the silence was broken by a sigh, so soft it might have been the shifting of robes against granite. Black looked up to see Snape staring, fixed, at a spot just ahead of him. Snape's body blocked Black's view, and he set down the rock he'd been about to move and began to work his way over to the taller man. Snape shook his head once without turning, held out his left hand behind him, low, as though calling a dog to heel, and said, "Don't." 

 

Black knew then, of course, what he'd known all along, and a cry rose up from his frozen intestines, through his writhing belly, out his throat, until he caught it behind clenched teeth and gave only a groaning hiss. 

 

Snape began to move rocks purposefully, with the same speed as before, only he kept his body deliberately between the space he was clearing and the man behind him. Minutes dragged by, with only the increasingly staccato breathing of the animagus to mark the moving time. His insides felt liquified, icy rivulets running groundward, as though to join the other fluids pooled there: shadows, urine, ink, blood, the detritus of destroyed lives. "Snape, please," he managed to say, strangling on his own breath. 

 

He saw the other man's shoulders tense, then relax, saw a shiver run through that black form, so eloquent, beyond words. "No," Snape said. "It's Fred . . . or George, in his quidditch kit." Then, he added, almost off-handedly, dreamlike, "There's a broom here, too." And then a cold, still, sharp laugh, like a nail skittering down rock. Then silence again. Black breathed freely for the first time in what felt like hours. 

 

They worked like that until the air began to change, until even in the house of death in which they moved, where even the rockdust tasted of rotting meat, they sensed the fresh greenness that comes just before dawn. They'd found part of what they believed was Longbottom, near what might have been the stairs. They uncovered a torso in Gryffindor colors, a supple chest mottled blue and black beneath it giving them no clue, except that the young man had been fit. Lavender Brown's head appeared, startlingly, in a concavity that was a fireplace, incongruously upright next to a tarot card: the death card, reversed. Snape had favored the scene with another hollow laugh, like the sound dried skin makes as it rattles against the bones of a hanged man never unnoosed. There were other parts: limbs, fingers, memorably a breast torn free of its torso. From the size and location of various pieces, they were able to discern that the actual explosion curse had been set off in the fifth year boys' dormitory, a fact that Snape reported with the clinical voice of a forensic expert. Black just gave his half-nod, an unsure shake of the head that might have meant anything. 

 

They found nothing that they could clearly identify as Potter. Partway through what was neither a rescue nor a recovery mission, really, Black had come out of his daze long enough to realize that he'd be far more likely to detect Harry in his dog form than by removing tons of rock by hand, but even after an hour of frantic snuffling, baritone under-breath woofs, and an occasional meaningful whine, the animagus had been unable to say definitively that Potter was among the dead. With dawn upon them momentarily, neither could stay to continue the search, so they slipped off, shadow on shadow, the sky pre-dawn black, one upright, the other in dog form, towards the secret passage that would lead them to the Shrieking Shack. 

 

Conveniently, the implosion-generated earthquake had shaken loose the stones and wards that had long concealed a second passage, walled up generations before the Marauders had wrought their special havoc on Hogwarts, a passage that led from the depths of the Slytherin dungeons all the way to Hogsmeade, bypassing the suicidal dodging of the Whomping Willow. Snape had long suspected the existence of such a passage, had heard mutterings amongst the portraits in the dungeon hallways, but he had never been able to discover the exact location of the secret tunnel until now. 

 

Of course, they wouldn't be safe in the ruins or the tunnel for long. After the obligatory raping and pillaging that came with any large-scale victory, Voldemort would master the revelry of his Death Eaters and start a systematic search of the ruins. Neither was the Shrieking Shack a real haven. Hogsmeade was occupied territory, and it was unlikely that the superstitions of a good-natured people would stop the Death Eaters from examining the Shack and its contents. Still, it was the best that they could do under the circumstances, and it was likely that the Death Eaters would spend the time flush with victory, rapine, and slaughter, terrorizing villagers rather than claiming the decrepit hovel in the name of the Dark Lord. 

 

Exhausted, haunted eyes met a sardonic obsidian gaze. By mutual, though unspoken, agreement, they lay down together on the lice-riddled, filthy mattress, Black's body snug back against Snape's, and fell into a restless sleep. Through the course of the long day, one would shudder and shift, noising wordless horror into the mote-addled air, and the other, behind him, would tighten his grip, open black eyes to slits to assure the smaller man's eventual repose, and then close them again, as though weighted by the death-knells some foolhardy, noble village resident was doubtless wasting his life to let peal over the countryside. 

 

Just before nightfall, both awoke, again as if by mutual agreement. Black turned over to face Snape, who loosened his grip just enough to let him complete the maneuver. Black stared at the Potions Master for a long moment, unsure of himself and the other man, then leaned forward and kissed Snape, almost chastely, on his slightly-parted lips. Snape shifted Black until the smaller man was half under him, shoulders resting on Snape's long right arm, Snape's long left leg between Black's two, thigh pressed against Black's groin. Snape's left hand made casual circles across Black's chest, brushing a nipple now and then, feeling the prominent ridgeline of ribs that telegraphed starvation. Snape chuckled dryly, again like the voice of a dead thing, "Not enough rats around here for you, Black," but the other man, who was returning the caressing favors, ignored Snape's gibe, knowing it was instinctive and not real. When he found Snape's left nipple, he pinched sharply, and Snape drew his breath in in an almost-gasp of pleasure. A wicked grin ghosted across Snape's face and was gone. Black remained solemn, as though his was an act of devotion and not sex. To distract Black from his dark musings, and because he did not like to share the man's attention with Potter, whom the animagus was undoubtedly mourning, Snape seized Black in a punishing, driving kiss, plunging his tongue again and again into his lover's mouth, sucking Black's tongue so powerfully that the man gave a strangled moan and thrust his hips upwards. Snape took this as an invitation to continue his conquest, and he began hastily unbuttoning Black's tattered robe, long, agile fingers making short work of the task. Black wore nothing underneath except for a pair of battered blue jeans, the top button of which had been long ago torn off. Snape smiled against Black's wet lips, and said, "Hmmm. And who's responsible for this?" flicking the button-hole meaningfully. Black gasped out, "Remus," and then stilled utterly in Snape's skilled hands. His eyes squeezed shut in a look of abject remorse, and Snape realized his mistake. 

 

Lupin had been dead for less than a month, and he'd been warming Black's bed for a year before the wolf had been captured, forced to change, skinned alive, and then left to die of trauma and exposure at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. The first any had known of it was when McGonagall, returning from a morning constitutional by way of the front steps of the school, saw the bloodied wolf's skin nailed to the great doors. Staggering into the Great Hall, McGonagall had sounded the alarm, trying to catch Sirius as he burst into the Hall from the secret room in which he had been hiding since the war had escalated and Grimmauld Place had been compromised. Sirius, however, had already caught Lupin's scent and had raced out the door, only to slip and fall heavily on his hands and knees in the pooled blood from the dripping skin. Looking up at the skin from his place on the ground, hands covered in the blood of his lover, Sirius had let out an inhuman howl so full of misery and loss that even McGonagall had broken into sobbing tears. Before Dumbledore could reach him, before the Headmaster could say more than a gentle, "My dear boy....," Sirius was off in dog form, following the scent of his lover. So it was he who had found Lupin, in his human form, cold, stiff, and raw in the morning dew. He had licked the dew from his lover's still face and let out another howl before bounding into the Forest after the perpetrators. He never caught them. 

 

Snape brought Black back to the present by sliding an insistent hand into the space between Black's concave stomach and his too-large jeans, touching his flaccid cock gently, not pulling insistently but suggesting the pleasure to come, keeping his warm, still hand around the cock until it began to rise. Black's eyes were still squeezed painfully shut, and Snape rained kisses across each eyelid until the smaller man relaxed them, then opened his eyes, to see Snape staring at him intently, his hand still unmoving and warm on Black's cock. 

 

"What?" Black finally asked, unable to bear the silence or the scrutiny any longer. 

 

"I want to be sure that you're here with me now," Snape responded, squeezing Black's half-erect cock meaningfully. Black shifted restlessly, embarrassed at the intimacy he was sharing with Snape, of all people. 

 

"Shouldn't we—" Black began haltingly, confused and unsure. 

 

"Talk about this?" Snape supplied, an edge of sarcasm and something weary in his voice. "What is there to say, Black? Do you want to fuck or don't you? It's all the same to me." 

 

Black stiffened, even as his cock lost its hardness, and tried to pull out of Snape's intimate embrace, but Snape was having none of it. The Potions Master tsked in a most insidious way, managing to suggest that Black's reticence was dangerous to his, Black's, health. He didn't let go of the now soft cock. 

 

"I thought you said you didn't care if we didn't," Black said, angry and humiliated now. 

 

In response, Snape took Black's right hand and placed it on his robes, over his own, rigid member. "In theory, Black, I don't care. In fact, my body does." Snape let Black's hand go and was surprised when the other man, instead of pulling his own away, began to rub teasingly up and down the outline of Snape's erection. It was Snape's turn to squirm, though he did so more purposefully, hips rising to make greater contact with Black's gentle strokes. "Gods, Black, at least undress me if you're going to tease. Make this worth my while." Again, Black stiffened, but just as Snape was about to give up on the sensitive fugitive, Black began to unbutton Snape's robe. 

 

Because Snape was still above the smaller man and Black's left arm was pinned under him, Snape helped him undo the seemingly hundreds of buttons, the slow progress revealing Snape's pale, long torso, his lean chest, concave stomach, and a trail of dark, silky hair from his navel that disappeared suggestively into his black wool trousers. Black growled appreciatively as he ran his hand down Snape's stomach. "Neither of us has to worry about being flabby, at any rate," the smaller man muttered, and Snape gave a snort in agreement. They had been rationing for months before the attack, and Dumbledore had funneled the bulk of their waning surplus to the students. Snape shifted his hand again to Black's fly, making short work of the American zipper and skimming the pants down his lean hips, as Black thrust up helpfully, his once-again-erect cock rubbing against Snape's inner forearm, a movement which brought Snape's breath through his teeth in a burst of air. "Black," he muttered darkly, dropping his head again to kiss the animagus. 

 

This kiss was a duel of tongues, Black attempting to assert his own desire, running his tongue between Snape's inner lip and his upper gums, a move that elicited a moan of approval from the Potions Master, who meanwhile was fisting Black's cock and rubbing pre-come over the exposed head. Black shifted slightly in Snape's arms and said, "Let me move a little." Snape obliged by lifting up enough for Black to free his left arm and then moving over Black entirely, both legs now lying between Black's wide-spread knees. Black immediately turned his attention to Snape's waistband as the Potions Master did a modified push-up above him. Quick work was made to divest Snape of his trousers, and soon they were skin to skin, sinking together with mutual moans on the dusty mattress. 

 

Neither moved for long moments, seeking comfort and warmth only, but, predictably, it was Snape who finally began to grind against the man beneath him, rubbing cock to cock, adding the lubrication of quick spit to their aching members. As their tongues moved together, so their cocks moved, with delicious friction. Soon, Black was arching beneath Snape, who was mewling soft and deep in the back of his throat. Black broke the kiss to reach up and take one of Snape's nipples in his mouth, sucking and biting in turn, until the Potions Master groaned aloud and shuddered out, "St—St—

Stop... can't...Stop." Black just grinned against his chest and continued his ministrations, until Snape pulled himself upward and away from Black. "Black," he growled warningly. But Black just grinned insouciantly and pulled Snape down again. 

 

This time, Snape resisted by sliding one hand along Black's cock, between his balls, and down to the sensitive skin behind the sac. Black stilled and held his breath, and then Snape's finger was inside his tight hole, moving roughly without lubrication. Black whined in his throat, whether in pain or pleasure was unclear, but Snape didn't stop, instead adding a second finger and angling upward and deeper. Black's whine became a shriek, muffled against his own forearm, as Snape hit the prostate again and again. Black thought he would die of the shocks running like wild electricity through his body, and he arched up against Snape's painful erection, rubbing frantically to increase his own pleasure. When Snape's fingers withdrew, Black groaned in disappointment, and then caught his breath at the sight of Snape licking his own fingers wetly, lubricating them with the only substance they had available. Snape wrapped his long, lean fingers around his own cock, his head thrown back in growing pleasure, and then lowered his hand to support himself next to Black's head. 

 

"Lift your knees and spread them wider," Snape commanded, his voice like dark water rising. Black nearly came from that command alone and did as he was told with a whimper. Snape drew himself up in the half push-up again and then drove his cock into Black with force, rocking the man upward on the mattress. Black threw his head back and squeezed his eyes shut, a strangled, "Gods!" coming from his mouth, and then, "fuck, fuck, fuck, Oh Gods, Fuck, Snape, fuck, oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck..." Snape drove into Black mercilessly, pounding him until the dust flew up from the mattress and created an aureola around the two thrusting figures in the dying light of day, joined as they were only in that one place, on Snape's rigid cock as it pistoned in and out of Black's hole. Black thrust to meet Snape, who was grunting rhythmically and chanting what sounded like potions ingredients, but might have been an incantation, under his breath. Black was screaming between short, hard pants, his head thrown so far back that his neck was one long, white arch. Snape, close to climax, simultaneously bit down gently on Black's Adam's apple and fisted Black's cock once, twice, thrice in hard, sharp bursts, and Black came, wailing, "Snape!" and shrieking wordlessly after that until he was utterly spent. Snape came on Black's cry, a loud, "Unh!" escaping him, and he collapsed onto the man beneath him. 

 

Long moments of ragged breathing the only sound in the room. Then, 

 

"Well, we've certainly given them a reason to believe the legends about this place." 

 

Black's hoarse chuckle, breathless with the weight of the larger man. "Can't breathe." 

 

"Sorry," said Snape, though he didn't sound it. He levered himself off of Black, rolling to one side and reaching at the same time for his wand to clean up their mess. He rolled back, wand up to flick and swish away the mess, but his hand froze in mid-motion as he saw a trickle of blood run from between Black's legs. Looking down at his own cock, he saw blood there, too. "Black—" he began, somewhat sharply. 

 

"S'okay, Severus. You couldn't have known." 

 

"But, I thought that you and Lupin—" 

 

"Everyone thought that. Truth was, Remus couldn't—. It's a long story he'd haunt me for sharing with you, Snape. Doesn't mean that I didn't love him, though. And there were other things—" Black left off, memories beginning to drag him under again. 

 

Snape put his wand down and reached over for his robe, instead, tearing a cleanish piece away from the hem and using it to wipe away the blood that still flowed in a tiny rivulet from Black's abused hole. So concentrated was he on his ministrations that he was not aware of Black watching him intently until Black sighed softly and said something under his breath. 

 

"What was that?" Snape said, his voice distracted by the task. 

 

"I said, 'You're much gentler than I'd thought you'd be.'" 

 

Snape looked up sharply, expecting to see Black's usual mocking grin, but saw only a smile, genuine and slightly chagrined, instead. He kept Black's gaze until the other man deigned to explain himself. 

 

"I just always figured you were a hard fuck, you know? Like you'd give it hard and take what you wanted and to hell with whoever was under you. You surprised me." 

 

Snape snorted sarcastically. "In case you hadn't noticed, Black, you're bleeding. It hardly seems accurate to romanticize my sexual proclivities. Had I known you were—untried—I may have avoided this altogether," he said, gesturing to the general vicinity of Black's arsehole. 

 

"And wouldn't that have been a shame," said Black, sincerely. He capture Snape's chin with one hand and leaned up to kiss him softly on the lips, pausing just long enough to drag his tongue teasingly along Snape's upper lip. "Thank you." 

 

"For what? Tearing you to pieces?" Snape said, acidly, but not faltering in his gentle cleaning. 

 

"For making me scream—in a good way, I mean." 

 

"Well—" Snape appeared speechless. Black smirked and got a bloodied rag in the face as a thanks. "Clean me up, then," he commanded, but without venom. 

 

Black got a wicked glint in his eye, but before he could do more than half-bend his mouth towards Snape's cock, the Potions Master said, "We don't have time for this. It's getting dark. We have to go back to the ruins." Black sat up rigidly, his face all hardened lines and shadows in the deepening twilight of the dusty room. 

 

"How can you be so cool about it? It's like you're suggesting a walk about the lake. Haven't you any feelings? What if that had been Draco's body you'd uncovered yesterday, instead of Ron's?" 

 

Snape, who was already standing and collecting his clothing, smiled a dark, glittering smile, all shark's teeth and daggers. "Impossible," he said shortly, breezily. "I killed Draco this morning in the Slytherin Common Room, where I caught him setting a detonation spell. That is what saved me, by the way. I know you've wondered. I escaped right after I killed him." 

 

Black's gasp was audible in the still room. "Gods, I don't know what to—" 

 

"Say nothing. What is there to say? He was his father's son after all. None of Dumbledore's best intentions could stop that road from leading to hell." 

 

"Still, Snape, he was your godson—" Black choked suddenly on the word, all at once remembering Harry, who had been blissfully, reproachfully out of mind during their fuckfest. Snape said nothing, just tossed Black his jeans, then 

 

"Get dressed." Curtly. "We're going back." 

 

**** 

 

Nine hours later, having searched through the Great Hall, an ember-riddled disaster of timber and melted tinsel; the blackened remains of the library, curled pages wafting around them in the slight breeze that reached them belowground; and the Hospital Wing, mostly unscathed, though with scattered, frozen bodies, among them Pomfrey and Trelawney, Black said, "He's not here, Snape. Harry's not here. We've searched anyplace he'd have been likely to be at seven o'clock in the morning, and he's not in any of them. I'd have smelled him if he were." 

 

"You're going to wish you'd found him, Black," Snape said, tiredly. 

 

"You think He has him, then?" Black said, emphasis on the first masculine pronoun, as though it should be drawn with a primary capital, like illuminated scrolls. 

 

"Where else might he have been but in the building?" Snape asked rhetorically; it was not really a question. 

 

Then, they looked at each other, both with identical expressions of wide-eyed startlement, as though they couldn't possibly be any more surprised than at the very moment when they said, together,

"The quidditch pitch!" With a look of mingled consternation, fury, and self-disgust, Snape moved swiftly in the general direction of the playing pitch, slowing only long enough to see that Black was keeping up with him. 

 

They reached the edge of the ruins together, breath quickened from their haste, and peered around a pile of stones, thrown as though by a peevish giant at a little distance from the remaining wall of the school, blessedly preserved because the Slytherin dungeons were beneath it. What they saw made their breaths go out in synch: the pitch was swarming with dementors. They could feel the clammy coldness of despair reaching out to them where they hid, and they could not tell whether it came from the grey-robed figures or their own disappointment in discovering that their last, their only real hope had been quashed. 

 

"He could still be—" Black began, but Snape cut him off. 

 

"Oh, yes, I'm sure his Patronus bought him enough time to make it from the showers to the shed and then across the open lawn, in full view of hundreds of Death Eaters, who doubtless thought it good sportsmanship to let him make it into the Forbidden Forest, where yet more Death Eaters are currently hunting unicorns and centaurs for fun." Snape's voice by the end was hot and dry, scorching and withering. 

 

Black, angry, pulled Snape back around the corner and shoved him into the wall, hard, but all he said was, "Okay!" emphatically, angry and a little hurt. 

 

"Black, you must get over this habit of hoping. There is no hope here. When will you see that? It's only by the strangest series of circumstances that you and I are still alive. Do you really think that Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Dark Lord's most hated enemy, is still alive? And if he is, by some even stranger series of circumstances, do you really think he still wants to be?" Though the words were harsh, the tone was not. Snape had not tried to get out from between Black's arms, which caged him against the wall. 

 

Black began to shake, almost undetectably and then harder, until his arms gave way and he leaned in towards Snape, laying the crown of his head against Snape's chest. Snape reached up to stroke the back of Black's head with one hand and rested the other at the small of Black's bent back. They said nothing for several long minutes, and when Black's shaking subsided, they moved, again by unspoken and mutual consent, towards the secret passage and the shack that had become their refuge. 

 

***** 

 

"So, where do you think Dumbledore has been in all of this? Do you think he's still alive?" 

 

"You do persist in floating these hopeful theories, don't you, Black?" A pause. Long moments. Longer still. Then, "It's possible, I suppose, that Dumbledore had time between the dissolution of the anti-apparation wards and the first Death Eater strikes to escape, but he was not a man to leave his students and staff behind in a moment of darkest peril," the last phrase said with mocking gravity, like a Muggle mystery radio announcer. Then, more quietly, and with no inflection whatsoever, "No, I'm quite sure that Albus is dead." 

 

There was another lengthy pause, an unbreathing stillness from Black, who was lying next to Snape, both of them flat on their backs, robeless, staring up at the web-strewn ceiling beams above them. "McGonagall?" Black said on a long outpouring of pent-up breath. 

 

Snape just snorted diabolically, as though flames could shoot from his nostrils. "Please, Minerva? She's more Gryffindor than Godric himself. Even if she survived the first strike, which was doubtless timed for the faculty meeting so that all of us would be in one room, she would never abandon Albus and the children to their fates." 

 

More silence from Black, heavier, and then a sudden, jerky movement of the shoulders, and, "Why weren't you at the faculty meeting with the others?" He tried hard to keep the accusation from his voice. 

 

The sneer in Snape's response told Black he hadn't fooled the ex-Death Eater. "I was late, lover, because Draco had been acting suspiciously for days, and on that morning he had been particularly nonchalant. He was never the actor his father is. I decided to forego the meeting in order to suss out his intentions. In hindsight, it's a good thing that I did, for me, anyway. I don't think Draco would share that opinion." He laughed, a low, chilling, evil walking bassline, reverberating through the mattress frame and into Black's body. 

 

Black shuddered. "You called me lover," he said, his voice cracking. 

 

"And where were you that you escaped the attack, Black?" Snape queried coldly, ignoring Black's observation. 

 

Black shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the question. "I was out in the Forbidden Forest, hunting," he said, the last word almost inaudible, voice riven with guilt. 

 

Another laugh, this one lighter but no less chilling. "And you weren't going to share with the rest of us?" 

 

Black didn't have a defense for his selfishness, so he remained silent, one forearm thrown over his eyes, as though by hiding his face from Snape he could erase the man's knowledge of him. But Snape wasn't finished. "Were you going to bring some back for Harry, then? Share the rabbit with your pack? Perhaps chew it and pass it from your mouth to his? What an exceptional dogfather!" Black couldn't miss the lascivious inflection of "exceptional," and he sat up swiftly, swinging his skinny legs over the side of the bed, and beginning to rise. Snape pulled him down by the back of his jeans, urgently, with a "Hsst!" and covered Black's mouth with his free hand. He whispered, "I saw a shadow pass the gap in the window boards. Stay still." Black froze, rigid as a dog on point, and Snape released his mouth. "Good boy," Snape said. He glared unblinkingly at the sliver of morning light slicing through the room from the warped boards across from their mattress. Movement again, a flash of sudden darkness as the gap was closed and the light shut out. 

 

The men looked at each other for only a fraction of a section, then nodded, grabbed their wands, which had been kept beneath their pillows for just such an emergency, and apparated just as the walls of the shack bowed inward and then outward with the force of a tremendous explosion of concentrated power. So powerful was the shockwave that it followed them, and they were thrust violently off their feet and across the ground. Stunned, they took a moment to gather their wits, number their bones, and realize that they were still inhaling and exhaling, and then looked about them. 

 

They'd discussed the necessity of an escape route and had decided, after much heated debate, that the best place for them was this windy, seashore village on the coast of Scotland. Though neither of them had a home in the vicinity, both had been there before, Snape as a boy and Black as a young man. It was a village best known for quick, clandestine Muggle weddings, usually of the shotgun variety, and in the depth of winter it was a ghost town of boarded cottages, empty chapels, and cheap souvenir stores with hand-written, "Closed for the season" signs in the papered-over windows. Perfect for the surviving members of an elite Order dedicated to the eradication of evil to hide out in when it all went to shit, which it had. 

 

No one would think to look for them here. It had been a coincidence of the highest order—"Fate," Black had insisted; Snape had sneered audibly—that both of them had been there before, one stopping with his father on a mysterious errand the purpose of which he never divined, the other with James, Remus, and Peter while trying to apparate to a wizarding village with a similar name that was challenging to bespeak when three sheets to the wind. Snape had said only, "It's a wonder you didn't splinch yourselves all over the Scottish coastline." 

 

They had chosen a spot just to the West of town, having nearly identical memories of a tall, twisted tree that hung precariously out over the eroding cliffside, sixty feet above the crashing waves and rockstrewn shore below it. They had been able to recite the windworn words on the plaque that accompanied it: "Here, in the eighteenth century, many pirates were hung in full view of the ships that roved the waters off our rocky coast as a warning that such villainy would be punished by death." As a precocious eight-year-old, Snape had thought it a delightfully macabre fact; as a drunken teenager bent on mischief, Black and his cohorts had found it seethingly unjust and had pissed all over the plaque and the tree (and their own boots, truth be told—the were very drunk) in a show of solidarity for their dead brothers under the black flag. 

 

Now, both men stood staring at the plaque, still somewhat dazed by their violent abstrusion onto this place. Snape was first to speak, "Shall we go, then?" His voice was heavy with exhaustion, weighted by many things left unsaid, and he turned away from Black even in the final syllables to begin the short trek to the village. Black said nothing, only followed, head down against the fierce wind buffeting them from the crashing ocean to their right. Both men were robeless in the biting winter blast, both tensed their muscles against the worst of the shrapnel chill. 

 

Once at the edge of the village, they skirted their way around to a back alley that ran behind a series of shared storefronts, all boarded up and closed for the winter. The village proper, and any hearty year-round inhabitants, were another half-mile to the East, along the high street. Here, nearer the tangling winds, there were no sounds by the moaning echoes of wind through shutters and along eaves. Both men stopped as one and glanced into each other's eyes uneasily. 

 

"Sounds like death," Black said, low and growling. If he had been in dog form, his hackles would have been raised. 

 

"Just the sea caves below us along the cliff face, remember?" Snape replied, almost soothingly, as though he, too, were disturbed by the wailing wind and sought comfort in his own words. Then he put his wand against the lock of a closed fish-and-chips shop and muttered, "Alohomora" through his teeth, jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering. 

 

Black moved ahead into the interior, dark even in the day from the stormshutters that banged and slammed against the front of the shop with every gust of wind. Careful to assure that it could not be seen from the outside, he lit the candle sconces he found along one wall, above a formica-topped square table and two molded, yellow plastic chairs. They smoked greasily, dusty from long disuse, but the flame held and offered slim comfort in the face of their situation. Robeless, knutless, with nothing but wands and wits between them and sure destruction, they were cowering in a Muggle hovel at what felt like the edge of the known world, with the wind crying counterpoint to all that they had lost. 

 

As if to punctuate their misery, the candlelight was dimmed by the darker, eerie green of the glow from Snape's Dark Mark, which was livid and gangrenous in the murky half-light of the closed-up shop. 

 

"Are you all right?" Black asked, concern shoving tiredness aside in his voice. 

 

"Why. Must. You. Ask. Foolish. Questions?" Snape managed through his teeth, hissing on an indrawn breath against the screaming agony that was his forearm. It burned like liquid fire, as though the very flesh was alight from within and eating greedily outward toward the air. Snape clutched the Mark, swaying wearily, his eyes going unfocussed and faraway. Black hastened to help the man into a chair and stayed beside him, one arm around his back, one resting on his knee, wanting to help but knowing that he could not. 

 

"Do you know why he would call you now, Snape?" 

 

"---" He gathered his breath for a sentence. "Malfoy," he managed to wheeze out. 

 

"Even if they found him in the dungeons, how could they know what had happened to him?" 

 

A shrug, painful in its cautious rise and fall. It hurt to breathe. 

 

"What if it's not Draco at all? What if it's—" But the man couldn't finish. The hand on Snape's knee clutched reflexively, unconsciously. 

 

Snape sagged in Black's embrace, half leaning on the crouching man. "It has passed...for now." Then, "It could be about Harry. I will go." 

 

"Go where? Go how? You're robeless, wearing nothing but filthy trousers. You stink of death and decay and rock dust. Don't you think that Voldemort will know, the moment he sees you, that you're the rat he's been hunting in the Shrieking Shack? And won't he want to know why you haven't joined your brethren before now? You can't go, Severus. It's too dangerous." 

 

An utterly humorless laugh, followed by the shrill death-cry of the wind outside. When the noise subsided enough to think, Snape said, "There you go again with your hope. We're dead, you and I, Black. There's no changing that fact. Now or later, they'll find us. The world is theirs, not ours, anymore." 

 

"Then. . ." a pause pregnant with difficult words unspoken. He gathered his courage, "Then don't go, Snape. Why go? If we're dead one way or another, why go for Harry? You hate him. You've always hated him, James' son, the Golden Boy of Gryffindor. And what good can you do him if you do go? They'll make you watch, maybe, what they do to him. Certainly they'll torture and kill you. And that won't have helped Harry a whit." Black was sobbing now, so quiet that it seemed like panting, but tears streaked the filth on his face, leaving tracks like raw, red claw marks down his cheeks. 

 

Snape turned in the seat, forcing Black to kneel because he could balance no longer in a squat. Snape spread his knees, and Black moved into the space between them, still on his knees, his face a few inches below that of the tall, black-eyed Potions Master, who had brought his hands up and was stroking the tears from Black's cheeks and leaning forward to kiss him. Black surrendered to the warmth of the kiss, the wetness of Snape's tongue, the saltiness of his own tears where Snape had kissed them away on the way to his mouth. When his sobs became harsher and he could no longer breathe through his nose, Snape released his mouth only to pull him fiercely against his chest, wrapping his long arms around the grieving man and rocking him slightly, one cheek pressed tightly to the top of Black's head. 

 

Whispered nonsense too sad for sounding. 

 

This was a Snape that Sirius had never seen. Rigid in his grief, sorrow choking up his throat and out into the air in a painfully strangled sob of his own, the former Death Eater comforted the Azkaban ex-con, comforted himself that here, at least, was something warm and alive, though they stank of death and would soon be dead themselves. As the demon wind wailed for its lover from the cavemouth below, the two clung to each other desperately, blind and deaf and dumb but for weeping. For they were the last of their kind in the world, or so it seemed at that moment of utter desolation. 

 

Only after eons of creeping time, when the candles guttered low in the sconces, did Snape attempt to stand and lead the stiff-backed Black deeper into the shop, toward the front, where there was empty space left by chairs now stacked against the walls. Snape transfigured a hideous, naugahyde-covered bench into a mattress, and the two men lay down together, unwilling to abandon touch for fear of finding themselves once more lost in the terrible world. And they slept. 

 

********** 

 

A bone-powdering shriek wrenched Snape from sleep, and he sat up, wild-eyed, clutching his wand frantically and peering about the darkened shop to find the source of the sound. A whimper to his right, and he looked down into the contorted face of Black, who was obviously dreaming of something most unpleasant. Still, he had not been the source of that sound. Suddenly, Snape realized that it was too still. The winds that had been battering the shutters and wringing death-wails out of the caves below the cliff-face had stopped. It was utterly still. Trying to will his heart to slow so that he could hear over his own pounding blood, Snape held his breath and silenced Black with a firm hand over his mouth, which had the desired effect of waking the animagus. 

 

Black inhaled as though to speak, but Snape merely shook his head sharply, and Black got the message. He, too, sat up, still but vibrating with a kind of honing reverberation. Suddenly, where there had been a man there was a big, black dog, and Snape understood that Black intended to use his extended senses to discern the situation. The dog moved, a piece of the night, forward into the store to the barred door, sniffing silently along the lower limn and then edging back and whirling to race, with a burst of speed, to the back door. Here, too, he snuffled quietly, then returned to Snape's side and changed back into his human form. He leaned into Snape as though to tell him a secret, and breathed, "People out front. Two. Three in the alley behind us." Snape turned to Black so quickly that their noses nearly collided. As it was, their mouths were sharing breath. Then, Snape whispered, "Where to now?" But Black just shook his head. "No. I'm done, Snape. I can't live like this. I say we make a stand. Five of them, two of us. We have a shot." Snape managed an inverted snort that sounded more like a swallowed hiccup than a note of derision, but he got he point across nevertheless. "Gryffindor foolishness, as usual. I should have known. Still, there's no time to argue, and if I leave you here, Merlin knows what will happen to you. So..." and Snape stood with the graceless, boneless fluidity that he sometimes exhibited. Black stood up more slowly, bones creaking, joints popping. Snape grimaced. 

 

"I'll take the rear," Snape said. 

 

A snort then, perhaps the first time ever for Black. "Figures," Black mouthed. 

 

Snape glared and then pivoted, but before he stepped out of reach of the smaller wizard, Black had grasped his elbow and pulled him half around by his own momentum. 

 

"For luck," he breathed, kissing Snape passionately, all tongue and teeth. 

 

"Fool," muttered Snape, but he kissed back, reclaiming Black's mouth and leaving a searing trail down his dirty throat. 

 

They took their places, one beside the front door, one beside the rear, raising their wands and reaching cautious hands toward the deadbolts, hoping that they were well-oiled and silent. Locks undone in synch, each turned toward the other for just a moment, staring at one another for what was probably the last time, and then turned the handles and threw the doors out and away from themselves, each banging on the inside wall with a sound like a shotgun blast at close range. Nothing. No predictable green light, no muttered curses, no shouts of surprise. Silence. Not daring to spare a glance at the other, each tensed and then threw himself forward into the streets, rolling out and then up, running in a zigzag, Snape down the alley and then behind an overflowing dumpster, Black around the corner of the shop next door and into a narrow walkway between a beauty parlor and a tanning salon, both shrouded in protection and deflection spells cast in a constant stream. Nothing. Silence. Then the scuffle of a shoe against crushed clamshells and a distinctive cough, as of one who is slightly embarrassed at witnessing an intimate encounter. 

 

"While I am certainly impressed with your vigilance, I am rather surprised by your attire," a familiar voice declaimed, deadpan. "Whatever happened to your robe?" 

 

Black peeked around the corner of the beauty shop, sure that his ears were deceiving him. But standing in front of the fish-and-chips shop he had just vacated was a tall, gray-bearded wizard dressed in a lustrous purple-and-gold robe, heavy with brocaded dragons that were swooping and rolling lazily about the rich fabric. Next to this wizard was a young, bright-eyed woman sporting bubble-gum pink hair and a nose-ring. He wanted to believe what he was seeing, but he couldn't be sure. It could be Polyjuice Potion. It could be starvation. It could be grease-toxicity from the stuffy shop he had just vacated. Suddenly, he felt a presence in the walkway behind him and he spun, already thrusting his wand forward in an offensive position, a curse ready at his lips. He stopped and looked up. And up. And up some more. And saw a massive, hairy face, punctuated by a grin like the keys of a piano, staring down at him with unequivocal joy. "Hagrid," he whispered, hoarsely. "No." he insisted, backing away and shaking his head. "No." 

 

Then, before he could formulate a plan for this most unbelievable encounter, he heard Snape's voice say, "Stop being a git, Black. It's Hagrid. Shacklebolt and Molly Weasley are here, too." 

 

"Are you sure it's them?" Black asked, desperately, wanting to believe but absolutely certain that it was all a lie or a wonderful dream. 

 

"Sniff them for yourself, Black, if you won't take my word for it," the sardonic voice replied. And that was enough, then, for Black. If Snape could be snarky and casual, it must be all right. Black sat down abruptly, sliding down the wall of the shop and staring, unseeing, at the adjacent alley wall. Hair around his face, no one could tell if he were laughing or crying as his shoulders began to shake, but Snape, pushing Hagrid's stunned bulk out into the watery light of the Scottish afternoon, knelt by his fellow fugitive, gripped one shoulder firmly, and said, "Sirius. We're safe. This is real, and we're safe." Black looked up then, mingled joy and sorrow on his tear-streaked face. He looked at Snape, saw deep in the obsidian eyes an answering light of hope, an impossible, bright beacon in the darkness of the former Death Eater, who had never believed that they'd survive, and he smiled. Snape leaned forward to brush a feathery kiss across Black's lips, and they heard behind them the startled intake of breath as Molly witnessed the display of affection. 

 

She recovered quickly, however, and bustled forward, already transfiguring trash sacks into robes for the two men, who were oblivious to the wind, which had resumed with renewed force around them. Draping the robes over their shoulders, she touched each one in turn, prodding them upward and out into the street, where the others were assembled. "You're freezing. We have to get you someplace warm, with some food, and a bath!" She clucked, henlike. Around her eyes was etched the deepest lines of grief, but Black and Snape pretended they did not notice, though both had an image of a twisted neck and wide, staring eyes, a hand outstretched towards bushy hair ringing a fallen face. Shaking it off, they moved toward the waiting group that represented hope.


End file.
